Do Not Enter

(A tribute to my room, which is unimaginably messy but very dear to me)

Books barbed hooks worn-out dolls with
hair frizzled out from lack of touch, clothes
new and old hanging loosely off a mix of
arms too fat and thighs which don’t fit anymore;
bowls of half-eaten breakfast (a victim of the
rush-hour), jades and lipstick reds and rings and
necklaces, earrings nestled carefully in porcelain
cups, cobwebbed memories framed on walls,
gathering dust from lack of use and
don’t forget the cigarettes and unpaid debts,
rows of souvenirs from secret dates,
pillows stained with covert encounters
with Jack and Johnnie, hanging posters yellowed
by teenage prophecies, and silks and crepes
and papers crinkled with stories lost in failed
relationships, alarm clocks on tables,
tangled in cables, old records wrapped with
with affection in quiet corners, and unopened
drawers of forgotten secrets, whispering prayers
from nights spent sleepless, old journals that speak of
love forbidden and perfumes arranged in rows
but carefully hidden, and a door that unlocks this
cautiously guarded territory, it’s all so real and
fake and fast and furious, a land out of reach
of the ever mundane and the never curious.